Related papers: Albert Einstein: Rebellious Wunderkind
In 1930 Einstein argued against consistency of the time-energy uncertainty relation by discussing a thought experiment involving a measurement of mass of the box which emitted a photon. Bohr seemingly triumphed over Einstein by arguing that…
In this article, we argue that the theory of special relativity, as formulated by Einstein, is a philosophical rather than a scientific theory. What is scientific and experimentally supported is the formalism of the relativistic mechanics…
Recent work on the history of General Relativity by Renn, Sauer, Janssen et al. shows that Einstein found his field equations partly by a physical strategy including the Newtonian limit, the electromagnetic analogy, and energy conservation.…
There are two important things in science: (A) Finding answers to given questions, and (B) Coming up with good questions. Our artificial scientists not only learn to answer given questions, but also continually invent new questions, by…
Einstein's theory of General Relativity is the benchmark example for empirical success and mathematical elegance in theoretical physics. However, in spite of being the most successfully tested theory in physics, there are strong theoretical…
This article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein's theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound as a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural…
The Einstein postulates assert an invariance of the propagation speed of light in vacuum for any observer, and which amounts to a presumed absence of any preferred frame. The postulates appear to be directly linked to relativistic effects…
Einstein's blackboard is a well-known exhibit at the History of Science Museum at Oxford University. However, it is much less well known that the writing on the board provides a neat summary of a work of historic importance, Einstein's 1931…
Einstein's unpublished 1927 deterministic trajectory interpretation of quantum mechanics is critically examined, in particular with regard to the reason given by Einstein for rejecting his theory. It is shown that the aspect Einstein found…
This note is devoted to a detail concerning the work of Albert Einstein and Peter Bergmann on unified theories of electromagnetism and gravitation in five dimensions. In their paper of 1938, Einstein and Bergmann were among the first to…
A number of elite thinkers in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries pursued an agenda which historian Paolo Rossi calls the "quest for a universal language," a quest which was deeply interwoven with the emergence of the scientific…
Although Einstein's name is closely linked with the celebrated relation E = mc2 between mass and energy, a critical examination of the more than half dozen "proofs" of this relation that Einstein produced over a span of forty years reveals…
Rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are generating much controversy in society, often without scientific basis. As occurred the development of other emerging technologies, such as the introduction of electricity in the early 20th…
It is known that Einstein's conceptual base for his theory of relativity was the philosophy formulated by Immanuel Kant. Things appear differently to observers in different frames. However, Kant's Ding-an-Sich leads to the existence of the…
In this essay we marshal evidence suggesting that Einstein gravity may be an emergent phenomenon, one that is not ``fundamental'' but rather is an almost automatic low-energy long-distance consequence of a wide class of theories.…
Humans like to find things out. They naturally ask questions and explore the world around them. One observes such behavior already in neonatal infants. Inspiration to further develop such exploratory behavior, the quest to understand and do…
Thermal diffusion has been studied for over 150 years. Despite of the long history and the increasing importance of the phenomenon, the physics of thermal diffusion remains poorly understood. In this paper Ludwig's thermal diffusion is…
The central nervous system and particularly the brain was designed to control the life cycle of a living being. With increasing size and sophistication, in mammals, the brain became capable of exercising significant control over life. In…
Many professional physicists do not fully understand the implications of the Einstein equivalence principle of general relativity. Consequently, many are unaware of the fact that special relativity is fully capable of handling accelerated…
In 1907 Einstein discussed with Wilhelm Wien the occurrences of superluminal velocities in dispersive and absorptive media. Einstein tried to present to Wien an expression for the group velocity in dispersive media that was based on his…